


burn yourself to the ground (build yourself up again)

by OnyxSphinx



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: F/F, Female Newton Geiszler/Female Hermann Gottlieb, also minor warning for homophobic language, it gets better though, minor warning for mental health stuff, newt isn't the most stable let's be real
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-14 00:07:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21006419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OnyxSphinx/pseuds/OnyxSphinx
Summary: The kaiju save Newton Geiszler; as San Francisco is destroyed, lives lost, Newt is given a reason tolive,for perhaps the first time in her life.





	burn yourself to the ground (build yourself up again)

"Why?" Newt asks; barely four feet, she stands in front of the principal, feet planted squarely; only nine, and already, her eyes glint with _ this: _ the stubborn glow that screams, so clearly, _ Geiszler. _

The principal—balding; greying beard thin, eyes too beady for Newt's liking—says something about her social engagement and integration; these, too, are important, he cautions, just as much, if not more so, than academia, young lady.

She curls her lips; knows, then, even—had she been male, he'd have recommended she skip straight to high-school courses, praising her as a child prodigy; genius, perhaps, even. But no; instead, two grades are all she is allowed to test out of—left, there, in the dust, with her far less advanced peers, to slough through the muck. "This isn't _ fair, _" she mutters, jaw grit, and her father sighs; softly.

"I'm sorry, kid," he says, "there's nothing I can do."

This, perhaps, is where she learns, first, _ rebellion; _ the dark black of kohl lining her eyes, lips a similar shade, her boots, knock-off Doc Martens, more often than not connecting with an ankle of another; rebellion—it paints her fingers red in the halls, her lip split, and she screams it to the stars.

Sixteen and finally, she's out; college laying ahead of her, and all she wants to do is forget; forget the lingering looks of those almost twice her age raking her skin, the whispered—and, at times, shouted; accompanied by fists, and then, pain—words of her peers.

She does not forget.

In two years, she's down a bachelor's; two more, half the days spent high out of her mind and the other half laser-focused, yield a master's; then, finally: a doctorate. This she marks with a single black line across her shoulder-blades, the needles of the tattoo gun digging into her skin, and oh; she _ likes _ the pain, the way it numbs her—just for a moment.

"_ Doctor? _ " sneer her colleagues; the same age as her, but less than happy at her advancements. "As if you'd know anything, bitch," is also a common reply, and yet—oh, it's _ good, _ this sting; because, for once, she's done something to elicit it—pain of her own making, and so _ damn _ sweet.

"Yeah, _ doctor, _ " she says, and throws a grin, "but I'll be getting _ more. _"

Electrification; the sense of power jolting through her veins, because she's always been a fucking _ attention whore, _ no matter the kind; good, bad, dirty—all the same, to her; pleasure, distilled. So she stops drinking, stops smoking, just enough to wake up to the early morning classes, and does two doctorates at one; rewrites, in her spare time, the biology textbook for fun.

Two more black lines join the first.

Ah—now. Now, finally, they see it, perhaps; a mania in her eyes, the nervous energy, barely contained beneath her skin as she moves; a bit _ too _ much sloshing over the rim, oh, careful there; it's flammable.

And now, at least, when they call her a _ dyke bitch, _ they do it with a sense of resigned awe; just a bit; not much, but it's heroine, and just as hard to break herself of the addiction. So she takes a weekend trip in her beat-up old car, the winter air drying her lips and nose so she bleeds when she lays out on the mountain, wearing little more than a pair of ripped corduroys and a button-down; and then she screams it all out—the rage, the fear, the pain; the loneliness, most of all, this untenable ache that _ longs _ for something she's never known; wonders, laying there in the snow, breath fogging the air above her, throat burning and fingers numb, bleeding, perhaps, if death is what she's made for.

She's barely twenty-three, but her soul's far more broken; she lets her eyes slip down; down, down, down, creeping ever further away from the pulse of light.

Something, in that moment, stops her; she cannot say _ what _ it is, but something says— _ wait. _

So, shivering and blue, she climbs out of the snow drift and back into the warmth of her car and drives back to her flat and—_ waits. _

The next morning, the news of the kaiju airs; Trespasser's destruction of the Golden Gate rendered in breath-taking HD, and Newt thinks, _ oh, _ and feels her world burst back into colour. _ Oh, _ she thinks, and wonders; _ is this what love at first sight feels like? _

The colours dig into her skin, mere days later; the inkjob costs her more than a pretty penny, and the recovery time is hell but—it's worth it, the wait; the wait is fucking worth it, because if she hadn't waited the first time, she'd be cold-blooded on top of a mountain, forever to remain unaware of the magnificence of the being about to crash through the rift only hours later.

It's funny, nearly; that, in a way, the kaiju, who ended the lives of so many others, saved hers.

It's like a flame's been fanned within her; high, already, it now rages to a scorching inferno; four more years and as many degrees and a penpal are the things she acquires, amongst others; a plethora of ink staining her skin and the fervent devotion to the field of kaiju biology she's pioneering, here, the lone wolf, all ahead of the rest of the pack, and, fuck, she'll bring that bison down or die trying.

They write her off, she knows, as a lost cause the first time; too manic, too depressed; her head's fucked to hell and her body's barely held together by threads she's sutured herself with barely any medical knowledge, far too out of whack to Drift let alone pilot, but still, she goes back, because fuck, yeah, she's going to die, probably, but it should at least be _fiery_—death in battle, as it were, so she hounds them with emails and calls and even hard-copy applications until, at last, they concede, and Doctor Geiszler joins the research division of the PPDC.

Hermann Gottlieb is everything she's not, and Newt hates her for it; for the controlled lines of her expression, the exacting cut of her gaze, the way she walks; each step measured and calculated and weighed against life. Newt hates her and she wants to _ hate _ her, and instead, she falls on the knife-thin line of dreadful admiration and longing that screams both for something and nothing; creation and destruction all in one, for the blade cuts both ways, and draws blood, too.

"Newton," Hermann says, her lips pulled thin; eyes too severe, but still, somehow, they read concern. "You'll _ kill _ yourself." The grip on her cane, tight, tight; white-knuckled, the furrow between her brows a crevasse. What is _ that, _ Newt wonders, for all her genius, still unable to discern it.

"If I don't, we all die," she returns, which sounds more noble, really, because the truth of the matter is that she's been dreaming in nicked arteries and the flow of blood over her own freckled skin for so long that this feels like a relief, almost; the decision taken out of her own hands, but better not let Hermann know that, so instead, she says, "I'm gonna be a fucking rockstar," because it's the first thing that jumps to her mind.

Hermann huffs; the sound, unexpected, makes Newt blink. "Then _ that's _ alright, I suppose," she says; bitter, her eyes hooded, hair standing up oddly in places from dragging—oh, right, Newt was on the floor before—Newt up into a seat, and the sight seems to goad Newt; beg, almost, to be teased back into submission by her fingers, roughly; the digits short and calloused; sharp contrast to Hermann's slender, pale ones.

"Yeah, well," Newt shrugs, and pretends to not hear the double meaning, there, that thing that might, perhaps, be fear in the intonation of the mathematician's words, otherwise cold and hard as stone. "If not me, then who?"

There's no answer; there _ is _ no answer, perhaps, and then Newt turns away, and Hermann says nothing, attempts to say nothing, and Newt doesn't look back behind her to see whether or not Hermann's gaze follows after her figure as she leaves, the blood that's sure to soon spill already cloyingly sweet on her skin, thick, like the scent of death.

And then, panickingly, as Otachi crushes the roof of the shelter, she thinks, _ Hermann. _ The word escapes her lips in a reed-thin whisper of breath: " _ Hermann— _", hysterical; and for a moment, as the great beast's tongue probes for her, the thought, desperate and fleeting, comes: the kaiju will be the death of her after all.

Finally, finally, after what seems an eternity, the tongue retreats, the electric blue of it no longer burning through her closed eyelids and scorching her retinas.

_ Thank fuck, _ she thinks, nearly a revelation, and then merely moments later; anger.

Skin slick with sweat and dust, glasses so dirtied she can barely see through them, she points a shaking finger at Chau and hisses, "You owe me a kaiju brain, you one-eyed bastard!"

For a second, then, she sees a spark of surprise—_ fear, _ perhaps, even—in Chau's gaze, and, god, it tastes _ good. _

And then—the blue of the Drift.

That, then, perhaps, is the most shocking of all; Hermann's mind burning out against her own in vicious technicolour, too fast and ephemeral to catalogue, slipping through her fingers like quicksilver, and, oh, Newt, thinks, this will drive her to madness like mercury does a hatter.

On the way back, the rush of wind around them, she bites her nails to the quick, her mind gnawing at what she can't say, can barely begin, even, to _ fathom. _

"So you'll be leaving, then?" Newt asks Hermann, words almost lost in the din of the celebration around them; after.

Hermann gives a one-shouldered shrug, gaze flickering to the ground, awkward, almost. "Will _ you? _" she asks. "Your, ah, father must miss you, or a boyfriend, perhaps?"

It gives her a pause—Hermann, for the first time since their letter-writing days, giving any sort of curiosity about her personal life; it snags against the fabric of reality, almost, because they've known each other for ten years and just shared a Drift but still they know virtually nothing about each other.

The loneliness rears its ugly head; sends her mind racing with fantasies where she knows exactly how to make Hermann's tea so her lips tug, involuntarily, into a smile rather than a bland grimace; where she gets to see Hermann morning, noon, and night; at her worst and her best and her most guarded and vulnerable; she _ wants— _

"No, no boyfriend," she says, mouth forming words she's hardly paying attention to. "I...don't know what I'm going to do. Next, I mean."

Hermann, leaning, still, against her, seems to sigh and curl in closer. "Neither do I," she says; softly; confesses, almost, and despite the press of people around them, they may as well be all alone in the room, the sounds of others no longer reaching. Then; hesitant, her voice barely audible, she says, "I don't...I don't want to go back to teaching, Newton," and that last bit, her _ name, _ in _ public, _ said so _ soft, _ brings her undone; the doe-brown of Hermann's gaze, beseeching, locking with hers.

Newt, mouth dry, croaks, "Do you want to move to a little cottage in the woods?" because, yes; she understands what Hermann means; the weight of the world's survival, suddenly lifted, leaves behind a freeness that highlights the aches and pains it caused; the deep lines on Hermann's face and the thinness of her figure, little more than skin and bone it seems at times; both of them more than a little broken.

"..alright," says Hermann; slowly; and blinks, tired eyes fluttering, lashes dark against pale skin.

"Sleep," Newt decides, and manoeuvres them out of LOCCENT and down the maze-like halls to Hermann's quarters; jimmies the lock and bundles Hermann, shivering, now, under the duvet, and hunts down the hot-waterbottle, flying blind but still finding everything, the information etched into her memories from Hermann's mind; fills it up and wraps it in a towel, pressing it against the mathematician's leg.

Hermann sighs, sinking back against the pillow, and murmurs; quiet: "Thank you, Newt."

Laying there, too-sharp limbs tucked beneath the covers, gazing placidly at Newt from under half-lidded eyes, it strikes Newt, suddenly, just how _ small _ and _ tired _ she seems, stripped of the defence of her coat and sweatervest, hair fanned against the pillow; rather than steely and exacting, she seems, for perhaps the first time, _ soft. _

It gives Newt pause; the picture painted, Hermann's mouth lightly ajar, head tilted, fingers lax on top of the sheets, is frighteningly intimate; enough so that her mind snags on it, worrying it like a scab. Hermann, oblivious to it all, mumbles, "Lay down, Newton, before you fall over," and weakly pats the bedspread in what attempts to be ab inviting gesture.

Newt squeaks; embarrassing and high-pitched, but thankfully the other doesn't notice; she continues to look at Newt expectantly. Mind scrambling, Newt says, "But isn't your bed a bit _ small? _" but it's half-hearted at best, and she knows they'd both fit without much trouble.

"_ Come, _" Hermann says, more sharply, and Newt folds like wet cardboard; toes off her shoes and pulls off her shirt, bloodied and ripped, and crawls into the bed. Hermann shifts, after a moment, pressing into her. "Heat," she explains, voice muffled into Newt's shoulder, and Newt lays there, frozen, heart thundering in her chest as Hermann's breaths even out, growing shallow against her skin.

"Hermann," she manages, only once she knows the other's asleep, eyes flickering in REM cycle; then, again, and this time, tentatively curling towards the other, "_ Hermann. _"

When she blinks awake, Hermann's propped up on an elbow, eyes appraising her sleeping figure. "That's creepy Twilight shit, man," she mumbles, blinking up at the other blearily, "and if you're ninety years older than me, I'd like to know so that I can reconsider some things."

It's meant as an off-handed comment, but the instant it's out, she knows it's more than that; and Hermann zeroes in on it, too. "What things?" she asks, voice sleep-rough; not prying, but merely following the line of thought in a way she never does when she's fully awake.

Still, though, Newt flinches. "...things," she says, vaguely, and silently begs the mathematician not to enquire further; knowing, already, it's in vain.

Hermann, like a cat, leans forward slightly, angling her body to Newt's own. "_ Things, _" she says, tone falsely disinterested. "What is it, exactly, that you're afraid of, Newton?"

"_ You, _ " Newt breathes, without intending it, and scrambles over words like ruins when that makes Hermann flinch back. " _ Losing _ you."

Once it's said, it sinks in; just how true that is; because before, she'd not realised how deeply Hermann'd already crept into the nooks and crannies of her soul, even before they Drifted; secured for herself a foothold in Newt's treacherous heart and now it'll tear her apart; she knows.

She was wrong, before; the kaiju can't kill her—only Hermann can.

Hermann's expression is still; eyes half-lidded, dark lashes painting kohl outlines, and then, she says, softly; "You won't lose me, Newton—you can always find me in the Drift."

Newt laughs; then, hysterical, almost; reverberating painfully against her sternum. "I don't want to have to hang on to a memory," she says; _ that's not what I meant. _

Hermann gets it; then; her mouth making a small _ o _ of inadvertent surprise, and Newt draws in a breath, preparing—

"I didn't know," Hermann says; gently.

"Neither did I," Newt replies, and quashes back the urge to laugh again, edged by lunacy; gives a wry smile.

Hermann doesn't move for a moment, and then, slowly, she reaches out; hand coming to a stop a hair's-breath away from Newt's skin; close enough that she can feel the cold of the other's skin, her breath freezing in her throat. "...I don't want to lose you," Newt says again; barely more than a loose collection of half-voiced sounds tied together by an exhale of breath.

Hermann's fingers, ice-cold, settle, a comforting weight, against her cheek. "You won't," she says, with a fierce conviction.

Newt draws in a shaky breath; eyes slipping shut involuntarily. "Okay," she croaks, after a moment, "..._ okay. _"

The other's smile is tentative but bright; genuine; she leans forward so the angle is less awkward, hand slipping a little in the process, down from Newt's cheek to her jaw. "Alright?" she asks, pausing, the distance between them small enough that Newt could shift her hand, just a little, and touch the other's collar. The question is anxious; her eyes flicking from Newt's lips to her eyes; waiting.

"_ Yeah, _" Newt says, shakily; leans a bit closer into her touch. "Yeah, Herms it's—that's more than alright."

"Oh," says Hermann; her mouth laxing a bit, the worried furrow digging between her brows smoothing out; "Oh. Okay."

Newt, this time, is the one who leans in; the space between them closed almost in the blink of an eye, but she stops just shy; Hermann's breath ghosting her lips. "Good?" she asks.

"Good," Hermann confirms; close enough that Newt feels the vibration, and presses her mouth to Newt's; tentatively.

"_ Good, _ " she says; again, when they pull apart; soft and like it's some sort of fucking— _ treasure, _ and fuck, that makes tears spring to Newt's eyes. She blinks rapidly, still too close, and one of the tears, caught on her lashes, flicks onto Hermann's cheek, turning her expression from one of quiet awe and joy to worry. "Newt...?"

"It's fine," Newt chokes out; wetly. "It's fine, dude, I'm just—_ happy. _"

"Oh," Hermann says, and she wipes away the tear that's fallen onto Newt's cheek and presses a kiss there, chaste and feather-soft. "Good," she says.

"Good," Newt echoes, and smiles, eyes flickering shut with a sigh; happy, perhaps, but if not that..._ content. _

**Author's Note:**

> you can find me at [harrowwharks](https://harrowwharks.tumblr.com/) on tumblr


End file.
